It is a matter of time, I think, until PR practices become common on the Net … network inhabitants’ understandings of their community and its relationship to the larger world will become less innocent as the stakes in their online discussions … begin routinely to contend with these types of professionalized interventions.
Predictor: Agre, Phil
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Computer-Mediated Communication magazine, Phil Agre, a professor of communication at the University of California at San Diego, writes:”Given the power of PR’s way of thinking about communication, and given the increasing importance of the network community to various industries, it is a matter of time, I think, until PR practices become common on the Net. Already one encounters representatives of the American regional phone companies (not always identifying themselves as such) trying to affect the framing of issues on various important mailing lists, for example with regard to the recent report claiming that the phone companies were engaged in ‘information redlining’ in the deployment of new-generation technologies. It is their First Amendment right to do so, of course, but I think that network inhabitants’ understandings of their community and its relationship to the larger world will become less innocent as the stakes in their online discussions (the small number of them, that is, that reach audiences who can affect the interests of large organizations) begin routinely to contend with these types of professionalized interventions.”
Biography:Phillip E. Agre was an associate professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has been the author of research studies on the Internet. He edited The Network Observer, an online newsletter on Internet issues. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Advertising/PR
Name of publication: Computer-Mediated Communication
Title, headline, chapter name: Net Presence
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1994/aug/presence.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Butler, Lawrence